Coffee and Cakes for Cash

Clare Jerrom

16 Nov 2012

I hadn’t realised how much I wanted to help people until I became ill myself. You see, when you’re young, you never really expect that bad things will happen to you, but it is these unexpected things that completely reshape our lives. I had been suffering with insomnia – a sleeping disorder – for over a year and a half when I decided that I couldn’t live with myself knowing that people were going through similar things as me if I was doing nothing to help... This is when I found YoungMinds.

Straight away I wanted to do anything I could for the charity and that’s where the idea started. Music has always been a real passion of mine, so I decided to organise a concert, on the 1st October 2011, to raise both awareness and funds for YoungMinds. I could not have anticipated the great amount of support I received and for this I will be eternally grateful. The evening of the concert arrived incredibly quickly and after a huge period of organisation, it was one of the best nights of my life.

Never could I have expected so much generosity from so many people and as a result of people’s kindness, I managed to raise over £2,800 for YoungMinds.

This year, though unable to do something on quite as big a scale, I decided to have another event. On 2nd September, I had a cupcake and coffee morning and again, was overwhelmed by people’s donations. After a morning of cake eating and goodwill, over £400 was raised.

It has been an absolute pleasure to raise money for YoungMinds and with a stigma still remaining around mental health I cannot think of a cause more worthy. I have become incredibly passionate about the work of the charity and I look forward to planning many more events in the future.